Ex-UniQuest MD gets Order of Australia award

28 Jan 2013, BioSpectrum Bureau , BioSpectrum

Singapore: Dr David Evans, who was the managing director of UniQuest from 1994-2000 received an Order of Australia award. He has been named a member in the general division of the Order of Australia in the 2013 Australia Day Honors list. Dr Evans received the award "for significant service to science and innovation through commercializing and developing new technologies", many of which originated from research conducted at the University of Queensland (UQ).

Dr David Henderson, managing director, UniQuest, said that, "We are delighted to see Dr Evans receive this honour. As well as establishing a firm foundation upon which UniQuest has been able to grow into one of Australia's largest and most successful university research commercialization companies, David helped to launch many other innovations throughout his career. These included the technology based on UQ research, which can be found in two-thirds of the world's MRI machines.

"David mentored many of the commercialization professionals, who are now leading Australia's efforts to promote our innovation resources globally, including tech transfer specialists, venture capitalists, intellectual property advisors and researchers. It's an appropriate and well-deserved acknowledgement for someone who has contributed so much in such diverse ways to our industry sector," Mr Henderson said.

Dr Evans co-founded Uniseed, Australia's first university-based venture capital fund jointly founded by UQ and the University of Melbourne (with an initial market capitalization of $20 million), and was its CEO from 2000-03 after leaving UniQuest. Uniseed continues to support various UniQuest start-ups, including QRxPharma Limited (now listed on the ASX); Spinifex Pharmaceuticals; TenasiTech; Q-Sera; Hydrexia; ProGel; and Pepfactants.

Dr Evans was also a founding director of IMBcom, which was established to commercialize discoveries from UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience (now under the UniQuest umbrella). From 2004-09, Dr Evans was managing director and then executive chairman of another UniQuest start-up, Magnetica, which is commercializing high-field magnetic resonance technology from UQ's Center for magnetic resonance.